Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Mechanical infantry man part 1

Meet the Mechanical infantry man, the 2 man version is better known as the Praying Mantis but this 1 man version was build couple of years earlier. In 1937 EJ Tapp working for County Commercial Cars patented a system of a small tank where a small armored box that could be raised to shoot over obstacles, in 1941 the first version was build, sometimes called Praying Mantis mark 1 but more correct the Mechanical infantry man, the driver was prone with 2 Bren guns (lewis in the patent) in a sort of overhead turret, the idea was really clever but as with all 1 man tanks it was to much for 1 man to handle, drivers complaint about getting seasick as well which is no wonder wen you see the videos of these thingy it goes all over the place, I think they did try to fix that as in 1 clip there is 2 extra bars or more likely pneumatic cylinders going from the front too the box. ooh forgot it was driving with the feet.Later in 1943 the Praying Mantis was build, based mostly on the Universal carrier, this 2 man version was canceled in 1944, David Fetcher explains it far better then me so see the video below for that.

patent drawing, sadly the end result looked a fair bit different and was not of much use

David Fletcher did a nice but sadly short video about the Praying Mantis version

Welcome to Midnight Greys.

Welcome to Midnight GreysHere I will post my own sculpting work and scratched build models and also the progress of commission work.Who I'm I then, well I'm Patrick Mondria, sculptor and master model maker from The Netherlands.1/72 is my favorite scale and all figures shown are 1/72 unless stated otherwise.Feel free to comment and hopefully have a good time hereMondriaEmail: p.mondria@gmail.com